| Billing Systems | ||
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An example of a billing system is - electricity payments. Every customer receives an electricity bill which must be paid. The electricity company has a large database (master file) of all its customers. The file will also include information such as latest meter readings, how much electricity the customer has used this year, how much has been paid etc... At regular intervals, meter readers go round each house to read the electricity meter. The reading is recorded onto pre-printed forms.
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| The forms are all collected and input
to the computer system. This may be done using OMR
or OCR, or by manually keying in the
data.
The data must be validated before it is processed to make sure no 'silly' data is input. Keyed data will need to be verified to check for transcribing errors.
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A document produced by the computer which is later used as input is called a turnaround document. | |
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The electricity bill for each customer is calculated by the computer and
printed. These bills will be posted to the customers.
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The customer then pays the bill by either sending a cheque or by
credit/debit card. Some customers may pay by monthly standing orders or
direct debits.
Payments received will need to be recorded as transactions on a transaction file and used to update the master file.
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For some billing systems statistical analysis
can be done on ...
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